Kavik_Kang

In addition to Sword of the Stars you might also look at how mechs are built in Mech Warrior Online. The commercial game business began with companies like Task Force Games and SPI making what today would be called "clones" of Avalon Hill games. Task Force Games soon came up with their own new way of using those concepts, which became a "second generation" of that form of game design. Battledroids/Battletech was then the first ever "clone" of a successful commercial game oth

To continue this... translation... a little more, lining up with a lot of things that I've said previously in the ship threads... The "base hull" of each class is what modern gamers would call the "meta" of that class. It is the most powerful pure combat ship that can be made of that class with the technology available to the builders. The USS Enterprise is the base hull of the Federation heavy cruiser class. Variants are always weaker in some way in a 1v1 fight, but

To continue with the ship editor discussion, since that is where this thread drifted too... The best way to look at this for purposes of creating an editor like this is that the fundamental basis of ship design are the break points in mass that allow for the mounting of the next bigger size of engines, and how many engines a ship has. It is important that larger engines are more efficient/miniaturized and that, for example, 2 small engines take up more of the "available space fo

As for the ship editor, it is a great cosmetic tool that has so far been inspired by what the artists know, programs like 3D Studio Max (I'm guessing your laughing and that is considered to be really old these days, haha). Space ship design is governed by the same "laws" as aircraft and tank design. It is, like a law of physics, always a trade off between mobility, weight, and firepower. We don't call it "mass-based proportional movement" for nothing, you know. This

I thought I should explain more of what I mean, because I could see you saying "thrust establishes acceleration, it's already there". The issue is that all of the ships have the same acceleration, because they all have the same mass (or "weight"). Thrust is also more than acceleration, it is also "power" or "traction". While you could do this the typical way that a programmer would normally do something like this, purely mathematically with an adjustable formula for an acc

I had been spending a about half my time on my own stuff, and half messing with the Fleet Battles ship data files. I've been waiting about 20 years too have something like this to work out so it is a big deal for me to be able to play with something like this. I thought I'd mention the two really big things I am hoping are in the next Fleet Battles patch. The first is that I am hoping that my gamepad works in the next patch, but not holding out too much hope that any time

"Space monsters" might be anything from "ship like" for fighting a normal fight, up to some kind of boss fight. Some large ones, like any boss fight type things, might have destructible components. They might also do strategic level "big things", like SFB's "Sun Snake" that can decide to dive into a star which makes the star explode.

For a whole new category of variety you can also have "space monsters" (or, "organic life"). As a point of interest, I think you can have a "Crystalline Entity" if you want one for the Star Trek reference. You would have the lawyers to answer this for you if you don't already know the answer. I think it is a generic enough term that they can't lay claim too it, the BBS door game Trade Wars had one. "Nefarious activities";-)

Cuorebrave, they aren't really a part of the game. They are a part of the map. Look at it from the other direction, if there were "background ships" that you couldn't interact with... wouldn't you be saying "if they are there I should be able to interact with them"? Forget about the terms "pirate and bounty hunter". Think of them as "civilians and police". If you, a "hero character" of the "Active Map" kills an "innocent civilian" of the "Passive Map" then a "pol

Oh... Wow! I REALLY love the idea of their being a planet with Fred and Paul's faces carved into the surface, like the "Face on Mars". That would be a tribute reference worthy of my own universe! EDIT: You actually sent me running off to my own note file... in the PDU the "Face on Mars" will now be the face of Neil Peart;-)

Assuming that the curse that hangs over me anytime I make a serious attempt at making my games hasn't left me homeless and without access to a computer and internet by the time you get to that point, I'd also be interested in letting you know what I think of the adventure game while you still have time to make changes based on our comments. So far my coming back to game design has been systematically destroying my life for about 18 months now, and my current situation trapped in the mid

Cuorebrave, those things aren't the game. They are the map. Like trees and rocks in an RPG landscape. You aren't being a pirate, you aren't being a bounty hunter, you aren't being a trader or pilot of a passenger liner. Those are all just things "in the background" that make the galaxy seem more alive, and not as though you are the only thing in the galaxy that matters and if it is not directly related too you then it does not exist. That's all they are saying he

So, with all that said, it's a perfect lead-in to this... I had mentioned this earlier in the thread but it has been forgotten by now. You can just “spawn” a “bounty hunter” in response to the player destroying a ship of the Passive Map. It could spawn anywhere in the galaxy, just to potentially increase the encounter ratio, you could “attach” that spawning to the player and some future conditi

You have to remember the "living galaxy" part of SCO. I had only been cautioning against adding game elements that would create the perception of a space trading game. A visible "bounty" alone would do that. Players see a bounty on them and expect a lot of things that would not be in the game to be associated with that. Stardock seems to have already known that and was never planning on having a visible bounty, it is more of an invisible reputation like many adventure

Brad's expanded explanation of what they are thinking sounds good too me, I was just providing a warning not to become too immersed in the idea of pirates and bounty hunters because that would almost inevitably turn it into a "half finished space trading game". So they seem to be thinking more along the lines of something I said earlier in this thread... "One simple way of doing this would be to have a percentage of the ships “in the background&

I should also add that I don't think Stardock is screwing up Star Control at all, this all still seems very promising too me. There are only three big dangers I can see, from what little I know of what they are actually doing, where things might go very wrong. This first is along the lines of Cuorebrave's post, that they allow "modern game elements" to obscure the core gameplay. People like simple arcade games. A good game designer creates core game mechanics that ar

Yes, the overwhelmingly primary source of income in SCO should be what you can find on planets. This is just one reason I said you should not be thinking it terms of "bounty hunters" or "pirates" but instead think of these NPCs of the "Active Map" as "interested parties". They might be anyone or anything that has an interest in the thing you have done that has drawn their attention. This keeps it from naturally devolving towards becoming a space trading game. As soon a

If the only thing the bounty is doing is increasing the encounter ratio for Fleet Battle fights I think it is a mistake to make it visible. A lot of people, if not most people, will see it as "very incomplete" to have that value/stat when all it does is make certain AI units attack you when they otherwise wouldn't have. I think that's all they are going for here, from what I read, and I think that can work well in SC. Optional stuff you can do, but if you do it you will have

There are a lot of ways to implement “bounty hunters” in SCO. Most of them will make SCO begin to feel like a space trading game that is only 10% finished. First, don't think of them as “bounty hunters” because that will lead down a bad road unless you plan on turning this into a space trading game. Think of them as “interested parties”, not “bounty hunters”. One simple way of doing

A bounty system could quickly take over the feel of the game and turn this into feeling more like a space trading game than Star Control. It sounds like you just want a means of allowing the player to make the game more difficult in a “natural” way. If you do “bad” things, you will have more encounters for Fleet Battle fights. If that is all you are looking to do I would suggest having the bounty system be “invisible” too the pla

Hahaha, that's great! A Spathi always needs to have a means of escape, haha!

Spathi Marines should wear jet packs... so they can escape.

The Tywom ship is more like the ships players will make in the editor than it is a Star Control ship. It has no weaknesses and is a pure dog fighter. This is one of the big problems with having an editor in Star Control and why it needs to be viewed as two entirely different classes of ships that don't really mix with each other. You achieve that "Star Control uniqueness" by breaking the rules in both directions with ships that are weak, in some cases almost useless, in one

There are very few parameters work with these simple arcade kind-of ships. You aren't currently using the energy and getting any variety out of it. Different systems and ships should use the energy bar in different ways, and there should be some weapons/devices that affect the energy bar. Right now energy works the same for everything, and there aren't any weapons or devices that affect it. Some systems should, like Dan'naths Gravity Wave or the Scryve's big laser, s

Duh... the middle mouse button I never use in favor of the thumb button that my mouse has. A Kholigar explorer ship has arrived from the Omega Octant of a familiar, and at the same time unfamiliar, other universe. This ship is inspired by a race from the Omega Octant of SFB called the Kholigar. The Omega Octant is like the Delta Quadrant in Voyager, ex